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I used to row boats all the time in my hometown when I was a child
7km from my house to school took about an hour
I don’t know when I was able to swim, perhaps since I was thrown into river
It’s how waterways regions are like, how can we transport without boats?
It’s like the way people drive scooters in Saigon
A big boat is capable of carrying goods such as rice to have it milled
A small one can transport about 3-4 passengers to work or school
My hometown is Mo Cay, Ben Tre
Long ago, every individual had a boat, every family had a boat
Since I lived near the river, whether the season was flooding or not, I often rowed across the river.
Among that charming landscape as beautiful as a watercolour painting, would we ever feel blue?
When looking at those clusters of water hyacinth,
I suddenly thought of a poetical line
“Our lives are like the floating water-fern. We drift to many directions but we reach nowhere.”
Yes, there’s definitely time when we feel so vague and aimless and forever
we look for a destination.
Loneliness comes again in this picturesque scenery,
in the middle of the charming landscape.
Human’s emotion is unpredictable, happiness and sadness mix together.
My heart sings a line “Everyone has his youth and thinks of his life
. It isn’t we ignore our lives whether it is good or bad, it isn’t we depend on luck, is it?”
We all have to spread our wings to freely fly like this stork, shouldn’t we?
Rise yourself up straight in your life.
[SINGING]
Look! It’s water hyacinth!
There is only sand, sun and wind in my hometown!
It’s the same anywhere in the central! Hot!
These two petals are dark and the other three are light.
This is the flower of water hyacinth.
Life awards us energy and time so that we can travel to everywhere
and discover new lands
to meet, to understand and to love
to make ourselves more responsible and aspiring.
Gaulthier told me he didn’t have much money
but he doesn’t lack determination to make his dreams come true
He traveled to many places
and the most precious thing he achieved
is experience of life, human, history, culture…
WHICH NOT EVERYONE CAN ACQUIRE
Perhaps, like Gaulthier, these young people will not stop at this trip.